Laparoscopic surgery is now a widely practiced procedure for operating on a patient's ovaries, uterus, gall bladder, bowels, appendix and the like. This surgery involves making small incisions through a patient's abdominal wall by means of trocars and passing laparoscopes and surgical instruments through the trocar sheaths left in place in the abdominal wall to perform the desired surgical procedure. Typically, a trocar of about 12 mm dia. is employed to make an incision through the patient's navel, and the trocar sheath left in place through the abdominal wall is used for laparoscopic viewing of the surgical field within the patient's abdominal cavity. Other trocar incisions are made at various locations in the patient's abdominal wall so that surgical instruments and tubes for introducing irrigation fluid into and aspirating fluids from the abdominal cavity can be advanced into and removed from the abdominal cavity through the other trocar sheaths disposed through the abdominal wall. All of the trocar sheaths are usually oriented toward the surgical field within the abdominal cavity.
The laparoscopic surgical removal of large pieces of tissue, particularly a large organ such as kidney, a uterus, a liver and the like has posed a formidable problem, because such organs are too large to be withdrawn through conventional trocar sheaths. If the organ is cut into small enough pieces within the abdominal cavity to be withdrawn through a trocar sheath, there is a high probability that tissue debris will be left within the abdominal cavity at the end of the procedure which can lead to development of septic conditions within the abdominal cavity, e.g. peritonitis, and other problems after the trocar sheaths have been removed and the incisions closed. Additionally, cutting a large organ or piece of tissue into smaller pieces and withdrawing the individual severed pieces of tissue lengthen and complicate the surgical procedure and as a result many of the advantages of endoscopic surgical procedures may be lost.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,037,379 and 5,215,521 describe a method and system for the morcellation of an organ, such as kidney, within a patient's body cavity by placing the severed organ into a plastic bag or container within the patient's body cavity and then inserting a cutting means into the bag to cut up the organ into smaller fragments to facilitate passage of the bag and its contents through the trocar sheath or the incision. However, the systems disclosed in these references have some difficulty in maintaining contact between the tissue to be morcellated and the cutting means and in avoiding contact between the cutting means and the bag or container holding the organ.
What has been needed and heretofore unavailable is a method and system for morcellating an organ or other piece of tissue within the patient's body cavity which maintains contact between cutting means and the organ to be morcellated while avoiding damaging contact between the cutting means and the container holding the organ. The present invention satisfies these and other needs.